Of Note
New Monsoon came with so much of rock’s past in their sound and performed with such accuracy that at first listen I thought they might be a cover band. They are not. Redolent of Southern …
If you look at the photos on Scout Niblett’s website, you might not think that all of them picture the same person. In one she’s a pretty blonde riding a bike. In another she’s a …
Jay Reatard is the questionable stage name of prolific Memphis resident Jay Lindsey, who has been recording and releasing music for about ten years as a solo artist and with the Reatards, the Lost Sounds, …
I tell Justin Sullivan that without rock, I might not have survived adolescence. I tell him that my 1960s teenage alienation was overwhelming, that rock lyrics put better words to my black anger than I …
As the millennium turned, Built to Spill was one of the bigger names in indie rock, even if the band wasn’t actually on an indie label anymore. Singer and songwriter Doug Martsch had gone from …
Cheryl Wheeler’s voice runs the table in terms of emotion. A singer/songwriter in the new-folk tradition, she teeters on the edge of a full-throated country sound but misses no opportunity to accent or put an …
One night I was flipping channels on TV and came across someone interviewing shred-guitar hero Joe Satriani. Satch was talking about how his music expresses his innermost feelings. At that moment the TV editors cut …
“Their music isn’t revolutionary,” says my friend of Vampire Weekend, “but it’s light and silly, and it makes me smile listening to little blips of it.” There is an impressive shock wave of fan-driven hype …
Everyone from Morrissey to Mötley Crüe name-checks the New York Dolls as an influence, but no one really sounds like them. Hardly anyone even tries. The Sex Pistols would not have happened without the New …
From the beginning, Bad Religion, a Los Angeles band, thought they had a plan for the world. “Don’t you know the place you live is a piece of shit?” Greg Graffin sang in 1982. “Don’t …
The Raveonettes are a duo, and their sound is all about dualism and contrast — noisy guitars and careful vocal harmonies, Danish accents and American musical references, modern bluntness and retro song structures. But the …
“The initial thing was just to have a fun time one night,” says Luther Hughes via telephone from his L.A.-area home. Hughes is speaking of his current group, the Cannonball-Coltrane Project. What began a few …
“I don’t mean to be nosey,” says David Letterman during an interview with Marilyn Manson, nonplussed by the vampirish figure seated before him, “but do you have chrome teeth?” Marilyn Manson, a stage name combining …